because we just can't have it any other way

fire alarm went off at 3:40 in the morning that was a nice surprise... not. especially because i had just spent over 3.5 hours attempting to fall asleep and didn't succeed until a little after 3 am. woke up completely disoriented, somehow managed to find a sweatshirt i guess and went outside. came back in and proceeded to spend another hour trying to fall back asleep.

lovely. sleep is overrated apparently.

2 AM Firetrucks

So, after I posted last night I climbed into my toasty bed and fell asleep. An hour later (around 2 am) the entire room starts flashing with strobe lights and the fire alarm goes off. I'm on the top bunk and let's just say when you're woken abruptly in the middle of the night the first instinct is not to climb down the correct way. Basically, I just lept off the top. Of course, I happen to be sleeping in a tank top last night so I scrambled to find a coat and boots. I'm actually not entirely sure how we made it out the door because neither Ashley nor I were very awake and thinking correctly. But we walked downstairs and out into the lovely 2 degree Rochester weather. I guess I had enough smarts to grab a scarf on the way out so I was pretty toasty. We eventually got the idea to go in NRH and sit in the tunnels until the fire department had come and all that. To say the least, we were pretty annoyed because walking up and down 6 flights of stairs and outside wakes you up and makes it really hard to fall back asleep. Finally got let back in only to realize that the "fire" was on our floor and someone had burnt popcorn.. AGAIN. What the heck guys, stop eating popcorn at 2 am and for gosh sakes stand by the microwave and don't let it burn. 

I think they should ban popcorn in dorms, it's the only time our microwave ever catches on fire. 

I did get to sleep in until almost noon today so that was okay :) 

Brick City Homecoming

This weekend was Brick City Homecoming, RIT's fall event when a lot of parents, families and alumni come to visit for the first time. My parents came up on Thursday afternoon; it was really nice to see them after being away from home for so long. Fortunately, amidst all of our rainy-rochester weather, it was an unusually beautiful weekend. 

Thursday afternoon my class was cancelled so I met up with my mom, dad and Sarah for dinner before my 6pm class. Had an ice cream party at 9pm, Ash and I have been saving up ice cream from gracie's over the past week or so :) Andrew and Drake stopped by too as well as a couple people from down the hall.

Friday morning I had class from 12 until 4. After class my parents took me out shopping to get some art supplies and more winter clothes-- thanks guys! Also stopped at Wegmans, of course, for some food items. Drove into downtown Rochester afterwards to get some dinner from a cool pizza place. Sarah stayed in the dorms with me all weekend and thanks to some idiots on the 9th floor.. I was able to give her the full college experience. Around 2 am Friday night/Saturday morning the fire alarm went off... there ended up being an actual fire on the 9th floor (with smoke coming out the window and everything..) so we were outside until nearly 3 am... Sarah only had boxers and a sweatshirt on..  Welcome to RIT :)

Saturday morning we woke up and Sarah, Ash and I went and got smoothies and muffins from Beanz, a coffeeshop on campus. Met up with my parents before heading off to see Bill Nye the Science guy. After Bill, we went to see a concert on campus with a bunch of a cappella groups.. yay eight beat measure! 

This morning we woke up and went to breakfast with my parents at "Jay's Diner" before they headed back down the road to maryland. It was a pretty awesome weekend, however, now I have an overwhelming load of homework to do before Ashley and I go to a concert tonight. 

Noise Level

Lately, the noise level around here has been insane. Between people running up and down the hallways at 2 in the morning (drunk...) and banging on all of the dorms and pushing the stupid flashing doorbells and the greek bids that happened today (the sororities ran around the halls singing at the top of their lungs and banging on doors to congratulate the new members). 

Then there is the issue of police cars. I've seen more police cars, ambulances, firetrucks in the past 3 weeks than I can count. There were the three firetrucks last week that surrounded our building with no explanation and then just last night (well, technically this morning) at 3 am there was a firetruck outside our building and a bunch of people were just hanging around outside. 

I've been doing a ridiculous amount of work lately.  Last weekend aside from a 2 hour game of volleyball on Saturday night I pretty much worked from Friday night after 5 until Monday morning at noon on homework. Every night after class, I generally work from 5 (or 9pm on tuesdays and thursdays) until 2 or 3 am. I mean, it's all art stuff but it's really overwhelming.  This weekend I have 3 projects (well, i had a forth but i finished it yesterday), as well as 2 papers all due on Monday or Tuesday. Woke up at 8:30 this morning and went over to the art studios for an hour, came back had lunch with Ashley and then went back until 3. Since then i've pretty much been doing... homework. Ashley's over at a friends house today so I'm lonely :( It's so weird having the room all to myself. You'd think after being in really close quarters with people ALL of the time i'd get sick of it, but i actually prefer being around people. Got some more stuff to work on tonight which I can hopefully finish before Sunday night (probably not happening...)

Aside from homework and class, school's good. There isn't a whole lot of time for socializing and what not. I go to lunch/dinner with people sometimes. I've been hanging out with some people on our floor too. Most of the time it's just Ashley and I hanging around. Everyone else is so busy it's hard to fit stuff in. Earlier this week Andrew took Ashley and I out to dinner to Ruby Tuesdays which was a welcomed break from Gracie's salad everyday. Wow, this is pathetic, I need to get out more. Maybe after Tuesday when everything is due. 

Firetrucks, Tinfoil and Uncle Plum

I've had far more adventures in this past two weeks than I have ever had before. Anyway, so yesterday morning I woke up around 7:30 and after a shower and breakfast I headed off to barnes and noble to pick up some clay. The store is only about 1/2 mile away so I just walked over. On the way down the elevator it started smelling really funny and I was on there alone so I pushed the nearest floor and got off and walked the rest of the way down. I was probably 200 feet from the building when I start to hear firetrucks and then 3 of them drive up and surround my dorm building. I was going to turn around and go back in (dumb, I know) but I just decided to keep on walking because I really needed that clay. I still have absolutely no idea what they were doing here-- but at least the building wasn't on fire :)

After coming back with the clay I headed over to the art building to go sculpt some clay for two hours. We have this project in 3D to make a banana out of clay (ironic? i think so). I went up to the professor and I was like dude uhmm, I'm not touching that. So he gave me a duck. Worked on the project for a while and then I had to go to Creative Sources. That class is basically just a lecture that happens once a week. They bring in some artist and they talk for an hour. Yesterday's artist just happened to be my drawing professor, Clifford Wun. It was pretty cool to see some of the stuff that he's done in the past. It's pretty nice to be able to bring your computer into that class-- i just recorded the entire lecture on it! I haven't checked to see if it worked yet though.

Last night Ashley, Drake and I went to a CCC meeting just to check it out. It was alright, we all agreed that we didn't really fit in all that well, although the people there were super nice and inviting. It wasn't really that overly pushy either which was good. Walking back from the meeting we came upon a concert, Uncle Plum. Ended up staying and watching that for over two hours and then watching the fireworks afterwards. Came back and watched a few episodes of the OC before people started bombarding our room. Talked with a few of the deaf guys on our floor which is kind of neat, it's a great way to pick up sign language quickly. They stayed until nearly 5 am, although I fell asleep at 3 so I missed most of it.. oops :P 

Woke up this morning at 8 and drew for a few hours. Waited for Ashley to get up and then we went out to breakfast/lunch around 1:30 with Andrew. Went to the art studio and worked on my clay duck for about 3 hours. Tried to do my 2D homework but the stupid printer in the lab wasn't working, oh well that's what tomorrow is for. Ashley and I went to dinner (at gracies...) and had some... SALAD! Who woulda thought. About halfway through two guys came up to us and asked if we wanted to come join them for dinner. It's college and we're supposed to be social so we accepted and it turns out that they were sitting at a table with 8 other guys (yeah, the ratio is obvious around here). After dinner two of them invited us to go back to their dorm and play wii and rockband with them. Hung out for a while and then we ended up going to the Gordon Field house and playing volleyball with 10 other guys. They all seem pretty cool and it was nice to play volleyball again. We played against some guys from the club team and almost beat them. Came back here, watched an episode of the OC and then we ended up just talking for the past two hours. I think it's bedtime though! Got a ton of work to do tomorrow. I'll try and post some pictures later of my project, I took some today but I'm too lazy to upload them at the moment.